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THE KINGDOM 


By (/ 
WILLIAM MONROE BALCH 


Professor of Sociology 
Baker University — 


THE ABINGDON PRESS 


New York Cincinnati 





Copyright, 1926, by 
WILLIAM MONROE BALCH 


All rights reserved, including that of translation into 
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian 


Printed in the United States of America 


To My Son 
ROBERT MANNING BALCH 
CITIZEN AND SOLDIER 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

INTRODUCTION? } snes eee eee 5 

I. Tue ORIGIN OF THE STATE ..... 9 

Il. THe Nature OF THE STATE..... 14 

Ill. Tur Socratn Nature or Law.... 932 
IV. THe Socrat Nature or DrEmMoc-— 


RACY 8250 oo Ra ee of 
Tue SocraL NATuRE oF Poxitics 48 


THE SACREDNESS OF Po.itics... 59 


INTRODUCTION 


ARE we presently to tear up the flag? 
Is patriotism to be numbered among the 
discarded superstitions? Is the politi- 
cal state a failure in the promotion of 
social progress? Will it be superseded 
by autonomous industrial ‘groups? Is 
civil government a mere tool of capital- 
istic exploiters? Is the national state to 
be damned and dissolved by the brother- 
hood of man? 

Such questions are more than academic 
futilities. All anarchists and many 
socialists are insisting that nations and 
flags are obsolete and immoral. The red 
syndicalist and the machine politician 
who execrates him are alike in declaring 
the state a dead failure in economic and 
social reforms. Highbrows and _ intelli- 
gentsia of several sonts speak super- 
ciliously of the state as merely one, and 
much less than the chief one, among our 


many social institutions. The laboring 
5 


INTRODUCTION 


masses of the world seem to be growing 
less and less trustful of ballots, laws, and 
courts as the securities of social justice 
and the instruments of social betterment. 

Social politics thus makes strange bed- 
fellows. The ultra-conservative might 
be less confident in his vociferation 
against the government as the instrument 
of welfare-service were he to notice that 
his political skepticism is oddly har- 
monious with that of the ultra-radical 
who proposes to get rid of the unseryice- 
able government and put a more service- 
able instrument in its place. And all the 
way between them are assorted thinkers 
(or talkers) who swell the same anti- 
patriotic chorus with varied but concor- 
dant notes. Some are urging that 
patriotism is but a flatulent sublimation 
of militarism, doomed to deflation when- 
ever the military spirit shall be deflated. 
A certain popular historiographer sees in 
nationalism little more than wanton il 
will toward other nations than one’s own, 
and a modern instance soon to be rele- 
gated to the limbo of _ pernicious 


anachronisms. There is also that great 
6 


INTRODUCTION 


number who seem sincerely persuaded 
that the state is merely a sinister artifice 
whereby the exploiters can subject the 
exploited to intimidation and coercion, 
and patriotism an illusion maliciously 
created in order to inhibit the just resent- 
ment of the victims. Others are actuated 
by an indiscriminate zeal to reduce taxes, 
repeal statutes, and see to it that the gov- 
ernment quits “meddling with business.” 
And so all, in their several ways, are 
doing one thing: they are discrediting 
their country. 

It may seem easy to dismiss such views 
as mere insignificant wrong-headedness. 
It is less easy, but more profitable, to try 
to understand them, and, further, to un- 
derstand what the state is, what it can do, 
and what it ought to do, and why. Is the 
nation a sovereignty and a sanctity? -Is 
patriotism one of the moral imperatives? 
Is it apart from or a part of humanitar- 
jianism? Is politics a played-out game, 
or is it to be the perennial process of 
advancing democracy? Is democracy it- 
self anything better than the baseless 
shadow of a pipe-dream? The following 

7 


INTRODUCTION 


discussion aims to help the thoughtful 
and conscientious citizen to an under- 
standing of the origin and the nature of 
the state, and to a valid appraisement of 
law, democracy, and. politics. 


CHAPTER I 
THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 


1. The state was not consciously in- 
vented nor artificially fabricated. 

MEN did not come together “in a con- 
dition of nature” to create a state where 
no state had been. Particular states may 
have been established by concerted action 
at given places, but only by men who 
already belonged to some existing state. 
The state was always prior to any states 
thus established and such new states 
simply inherited their constituent ele- 
ments from their predecessors. Yet even 
this much of artificial state-making, if 
real, is rare. 

2. The state originates in human 
nature. 

Membership in the state is the natural 
condition of man. “Man,” said Aristotle, 
‘is a political animal.” Since history 


began every man born has been born into 
9 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


a state. It may, perhaps, be insisted that 
we take account of a few “nature-peo- 
ples” living in tiny food-groups, who are 
said to have no sort of political organiza- 
tion. But even if such there be, it is still 
true that every man is born into a family 
and that the state itself was born of the 
family. 

What, then, is to be said to the occa- 
sional denial that primeval men lived in 
families, and the kindred denial that the 
state had its source in the family? 

As to the first of these questions, it may 
be said confidently that the conception of 
the earliest human association as a horde 
living in sexual promiscuity and not as a 
family, is no longer in the best of stand- 
ing. Since the great work of Wester- 
marck on The History of Human Mar- 
riage, the competent specialists, by a 
large majority, have accepted his findings 
that the family is as old as humanity it- 
self, and that the few doubtful instances © 
of promiscuous hordes are to be reckoned, 
not as primitive, but as degenerate forms 
of association. 


The venerable theory that “‘the state is 
10 


THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 


the family writ large’ (to use Woodrow 
Wilson’s phrasing of it) meets with an 
imposing challenge. According to the 
theory in question, primitive families, re- 
taining the loyalty of their ever-remoter 
kindred, expanded naturally and grad- 
ually into tribes, and tribes in turn, as 
their functions of control, defense and 
welfare-service matured, expanded into 
states. Thus the state is a vast and 
majestic household. 

This view is challenged, for instance, 
by an American publicist who sees the 
beginning of the state in a band of savage 
warriors organized to protect and in- 
crease their joint property. Similarly, a 
great German publicist finds the begin- 
ning of the state in nothing better than a 
primitive bandit gang. Granting that 
the possession of property strengthened, 
and the hope of increasing it stimulated 
the earliest organizations of social con- 
trol, the question would still arise, What 
kind of group would naturally hold such 
a joint property and fight either to defend 
or to enlarge it? Is not the answer of 
good sense simply this—‘A group of kins- 

11 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


men”? Even if the earliest “state” were 
only a war party or a bandit crew, the 
warriors or bandits in most cases would 
be brothers and cousins, and so it would 
be a family affair after all. Thus even 
by the way of the challenging position we 
return to the position challenged. And 
these views which pose as quite modern 
may be very well illustrated out of the 
Old Testament. And instead of displac- 
ing they serve very well as footnotes to 
the old “patriarchal theory” of the origin 
of the state. Thus, and truly, writes 
Walter Rauschenbusch: “Political unity 
was at first an expansion of family unity. 
The passionate loyalty with which a na- 
tion defends its country and its freedom 
is not simply a defense of real estate and 
livestock, but of its national brotherhood 
and solidarity. Patriotism hitherto has 
been largely a prophetic outreaching to- 
ward a great fellowship nowhere realized. 
The peoples walk by faith.”* 

3. The nation is of divine origin. 

Is it derived from evolution? If so, 





1 The Social Principles of Jesus, page 24. Copyright 
by Association Press. 


12 


THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE 


“evolution is God’s way of doing things.” 
Is it derived from human nature? “God 
made man in his own image.” Is it the 
spontaneous outgrowth of human life? 
“In him we live, and move, and have our 
being.” : 

Thus the divine origin of the state ap- 
pears, first, in the divine origin of man; 
second, in the divine origin of the family ; 
third, in the divine end in history. What- 
ever is truly natural, truly human, truly 
beneficent is therefore truly divine, and 
nowhere more truly than in the tran- 
scendent dignity of the nation. 


13 


CHAPTER II 
THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


1. The national state and the dynastic 
state. 

STATES are of two sorts, fundamentally 
different—the national state and the 
dynastic state. 

The national state, or the nation, is a 
sovereignty constituted by a people con- 
scious of itself as a distinct political unit. 
The national unity thus realized may be 
one or both of two things. It may be a 
racial unity, as the Italian nation or the 
German nation. Each of these great 
states achieved its own being because its 
people believed themselves to be one race. 
Whether or not their belief can be veri- 
fied as a biological fact is not to the point. 
What is to the point is that the belief 
itself is a psychological fact, and consti- 
tutes its own verification. It is one of 


those “imponderables” which Bismarck 
14 


THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


himself reckoned more potent than blood 
and iron. Perhaps more than anything 
else, this sort of racial nationalism has 
been the determining dynamic in the last 
hundred years of history. 

The unity of a national state may also 
be an interest-unity, the consciousness of 
a common economic and cultural soli- 
darity, sometimes even the conviction of 
an exalted vocation in history. 

Interest-unity will, of course, intensify 
racial unity, or in the absence of the 
latter may even serve as an effective sub- 
stitute for it. Thus two or more races 
are often joined in one nation, as Bel- 
gium, Switzerland, and preeminently the 
United Kingdom and the United States. 

In fundamental contrast with the na- 
tional state is the dynastic state, a 
sovereignty constituted by the territorial 
patrimony of some reigning family. It 
exists by virtue of historical accident and 
not through the action of true state-mak- 
ing forces. In two distinct ways it may 
lack the unity of a true nation. First, by 
reason of over-inclusion it may embrace 


various nationalities without assimilat- 
15 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


ing them to itself or even reconciling 
them to one another. Unnatural as such 
statehood is in fact, it has nevertheless 
been arrogantly and officially dogmatized. 
In one of history’s most pregnant hours, 
namely, at the Congress of Vienna, when 
the English representative declared that 
England stood for the rights of the Euro- 
pean peoples, Metternich replied that 
Austria stood for the prerogatives of the 
Kuropean dynasties. Though the rising 
power of nationalism at last drove Met- 
ternich from the empire which he had so 
long and so adroitly dominated, yet even — 
then Austria read not the writing on the 
wall, and at last, in November, 1918, 
Austria’s own “pomp of yesterday was 
one with Nineveh and Tyre.” To be a 
German, to be a Magyar, to be a Czech, 
to be a Servian, to be a Pole, is a spiritual 
fact, but to be a subject of the House of 
Hapsburg is only a passing incident. That 
explains why there is no Austrian Empire 
on the map to-day. Thus, too, the Turk- 
ish Empire was defective by over-inclu- 
sion. Arab, Armenian, and Greek could 


not be made Turk by the coercion of an 
16 


THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


Ottoman dynasty. And if Turkey re- 
mains on the map to-day, it is only be- 
cause the Turks have resolved to be no 
longer an empire but a nation, while the 
old subject nationalities are not only per- 
mitted but constrained to go their own 
way. 

Also, by reason of exclusion the 
dynastie state often violates the principle 
of national unity. Such a state may be 
only a dismembered fragment of a nation, 
like Lichtenstein, whose population is a 
part of the German nation excluded from 
the German state, or San Marino, in like 
manner a segregated portion of Italy. 
The occasional existence of such tiny 
states may be harmless because of their 
unimportance. But the dissection of the 
German nation into some three hundred 
sovereignties, some of them so diminutive 
that merchants would evade the customs- 
duties by a half-hour’s detour, was a spec- 
tacle almost as tragic as it was absurd. 
It was the vivisection of a nation’s soul. 
Under the present emergency conditions 
there is, perhaps, a prudential justifica- 


tion for the refusal of the World War 
17 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


victors to permit Austria to enter the 
German Republic. Nevertheless, the 
Austrians are of German blood and Ger- 
man spirit, and to deny them their place 
in German national life may, possibly, 
prove to be the greater imprudence in the 
end. 

The dynastic state, whether by reason 
of over-inclusion or exclusion, is only a 
pseudo-state. It is fatally vitiated by 
elements of cynicism, mockery, unreality. 
It is a structure whose supports do not 
tally with its weights and thrusts. It is 
an offense against the human spirit and 
accounts for many of the reddest dis- 
asters in all the cycles of time. The state 
which is also a nation, whether by racial 
unity or interest-unity, is the only one 
that can possibly know “the peace and 
married calm of states.” 

Our further concern, in these pages, 
will be with the national state alone. 

2. The state is the functioning organ 
of society. 

Political action is the effort of society 
to exert its own will. The state, of course, 


is not the only social organ that func- 
18 


THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


tions; there are the family, the school, the 
corporation. But through these it is only 
a part of society that functions. When 
society endeavors to function as a unit, it 
does so in the character of the sovereign 
state. Society institutionalizes its own 
identity in the state. 

This larger significance of the state can 
be verified by two considerations. 

First, the state is the largest perma- 
nent social group which is able to funce- 
tion regularly as a unit. It is the only 
group to which every individual belongs. 

Again, the state is a sovereignty. It is 
the only group which is subordinate to 
no other group. It is the group to which 
all other groups, save only other states, 
are subordinate. Some publicists indeed 
repudiate this doctrine of sovereignty, 
apparently owing to misconceptions. 
Sovereignty, for instance, is not omnipo- 
tence. There are many things which the 
most powerful sovereignties cannot do; 
even some of the powers which they wield 
in contemplation of the law are unwieldy 
in practice. Neither is sovereignty the 


same as moral infallibility. It does not 
19 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


mean that the state can do no wrong. It 
means merely that the wrong done by the 
state is not against any political law, 
though none the less against the moral 
law and the divine.law. The state itself 
is subject in all things to the higher 
sovereignty of the ethical and the divine. 
The sovereignty of the state means 
simply that its majesty is as high and its 
dominion as wide as the society which 
it embodies. 

This identification of the state with 
society defines at once the relations of the 
state to its smaller included groups, the 
relations of the state to other states, and 
the sphere and functions of the state. 

The subordination of the smaller 
groups to the state enhances their 
sanctity. It does not mean, for instance, 
that a man’s loyalty to his family is a 
minor virtue compared with his loyalty 
to the nation. Rather it means that his 
family loyalty receives added sanctity be- 
cause it is vital to his national loyalty. 
Since disloyalty to family weakens the 
nation and, if general, presages national 


decadence, it follows that family loyalty, 
20 


THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


a major virtue in itself, becomes doubly 
virtuous by reason of its vital import to 
any great nation. So of any of the social 
virtues, any of the social groups; he who 
is true to these, establishing their in- 
tegrity, beautifying their structure, 
sweetening and strengthening their hu- 
man helpfulness, may reflect confidently, 
proudly, “I am building the nation, mak- 
ing high history, cooperating with the 
great and the good of all times, uplifting 
the generations to come.” 

The government is not the state. It is 
the agency to which the state commits the 
functions of political control. Hence, 
governments may rise and fall, even with 
revolutionary suddenness, and yet the 
state goes right on, its continuity unin- 
terrupted. Thus fell the French and the 
German Empires, each only a govern- 
ment, but France and Germany, each a 
state, survived in republics, each another 
government but the same state. To illus- 
trate concretely: In such cases the new 
government is held responsible for the 
publie debt and the international obliga- 


tions of the old government, these respon- 
21 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


sibilities being those of the one state 
which acts through both governments. 
For the state has its being, not even in 
its most august institutions, but in 
society itself. Roman governments fell 
repeatedly, but the downfall of the Ro- 
man state came only with the downfall 
of Roman society. 

The relationship of the state to other 
states is also implicit in the social nature 
of the state. Each national state, being 
a distinct society, is a member of the 
world-community with other states. This 
may seem to assert a super-society, if not 
a super-state, and thus may appear to 
leave the society embodied in the state 
in the aspect of a mere social group sub- 
ordinate to that greater society which is 
the community of nations. That would 
be true were the community of nations 
actually embodied in a world-state. But, 
inasmuch as there is no such world-state, 
it is still true that the present political 
state is identical with society in its 
widest organization and in its sovereign 
prerogatives. And the fullest self-real- 


ization of each nation is to be achieved in 
22 


THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


the community of the nations. Just as 
the individual attains the highest indi- 
viduality through fraternity with other 
individuals, just as the family reaches its 
fullest development by making good in 
the neighborhood, so the nation attains 
the highest nationality in the neighbor- 
hood of nations. “America first,” or any 
other nation “first,’ cannot be achieved 
rightly, nor achieved at all, except by 
being first in brotherhood. The selfish 
attempt of any nation to be “‘first,’ or 
“ueber alles,’ in any way other than the 
way of service, is the shortest way to 
self-belittlement and historic ignominy. 
One still may ask, “Can it, after all, be 
said in truth that the state is the largest 
social group functioning as a unit?” 
What of international combinations, 
ententes, alliances, Peace Conferences, 
and the League of Nations? Do we not 
have here functioning groups larger than 
any state? The answer is simply that 
these are groups of the states, and their 
functioning is that of states cooperating 
indeed, yet still functioning individually. 


Any such group, so far as voluntary and 
23 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


impermanent, has no volition of its own, 
but acts on, as it exists by, the several 
volitions of the participating states. On 
the other hand, should such a group be- 
come permanent and sovereign, it would 
simply be a new and larger state. And 
were it to become all-inclusive, it would 
then be the world-state. This may well 
be the goal toward which age-long history 
is ever tending. It seems implicit in the 
gospel prediction of the kingdom of 
heaven. 

The identification of society with the 
state defines the sphere and function of 
the state. 

Is that country “best governed that is 
least governed”? That depends on how 
much and what kind of governing it 
needs. It is true that the best country 
is the one that will need the least re- 
straint. But restraint is only one of the 
two great functions of the state. The 


» other is service. The restraint-function 


of the state should decrease with prog- 
“ress, but the service-function should in- 
crease. That is to say, it.is the nature of 


increasing socialization to qualify the 
24 


THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


members of society for the doing of uni- 
versal team work with increasing effi- 
ciency and to use the state in that behalf. 
For the function of the state is to do 
whatever society can do for its own wel- 
fare through its political organs and 
powers. 

3. The state is a moral and religious 
being. 

The process of a nation’s history is the 
formation of its national purpose. And 
the purpose to which a nation sets itself, 
as truly as the purpose of an individual, 
registers its moral character. 

The nation’s character is evolved 
through moral conflict. It grows by bear- 
ing its part, whether good or evil, in the 
age-long strife between the right and the 
wrong. Thus it attains to its own good 
or evil. 

Furthermore, in the words of Mulford, 
“the nation is a moral person, since it is 
called as a power in the coming of that 
Kingdom in which is the moral govern- 
ment of the world, and whose completion — 
is the goal of history.’* It was one of the 


1The Nation, page 19. 
25 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


greatest sayings of Aristotle, and, indeed, 
of the ancient world, that “the end of the 
state is not merely to live but to live 
nobly.’’? 

The state, because a moral being, is 
therefore a religious being. It is the 
power and minister of God, subsisting in 
his will, answerable to his judgment, and 
rising or falling according to its con- 
formity to his purpose. ‘Let every soul 
be subject unto the higher powers. For 
there is no power but of God; the powers 
that be are ordained of God. Whoso- 
ever, therefore, resisteth the power, re- 
sisteth the ordinance of God: and they 
that resist shall receive to themselves 
damnation. For rulers are not a terror 
to good works, but to the evil. Wilt 
thou then not be afraid of the power? do 


~ that which is good, and thou shalt have 


praise of the same: for he is the minister 
of God to thee for good.’”* 

4. The United States is a Christian 
nation. 

In the decision of the momentous 





2 Politics: Book I, Chapter IT. 
®Romans 13. 1-4. 


26 


THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


“Holy Trinity Case” the Supreme Court 
of the United States used these words: 
“These, and many other matters which 
might be noticed, add a volume of unoffi- 
cial declarations to the mass of organic: 
utterances that this is a Christian na- 
tion.”* The venerable Justice Brewer, 
of the same court, once wrote a volume 
entitled The United States a Christian 
Nation, in which he demonstrated that 
the Christian character of this republic 
is established in the public sentiment and 
conscience, in the basic facts of our na- 
tional history, and in the definite formu- 
lations of the law. 

This does not mean that other reli- 
gions and irreligion are forbidden by law, 
nor that citizens are required to prac- 
tice Christian forms of worship, nor that 
taxes must be paid for the support of 
Christian churches. But its meaning 
may be set forth, in part at least, in the 
propositions that here ensue: 

That laws and public institutions 
should not disharmonize with the fact 





4Holy Trinity Church vs. U.S., 143 U.S. 471. 
27 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


that Christianity is the faith of the great 
mass of the American people. 

That public policy should encourage 
religious institutions, though not exclu- 
sively those of the. Christian religion, 
since such an ungenerous limitation 
would itself be unchristian. 

That the existence of our republic has 
been’ evolved by historic forces among 
which Christianity is the chief, illustrat-. 
ing the saying of Sir John Seeley that 
“from history we learn that the great 
“function of religion has been the found- 
ing and sustaining of states.” 

In view of the Christian character of 
the nation many religious policies have 
been practiced or proposed as public 
policies. Among such the following may 
claim brief discussion here: 

(1) Public bodies and public occasions 
are officially solemnized by prayer, as 
illustrated by legislative and military 
chaplaincies, and the impressive solemni- 
ties with which the Arms Conference at 
Washington was so auspiciously opened. 

(2) The exemption of church property 


from taxes is generally practiced, though 
28 


THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


often called in question. Usually, this 
practice is justified on the ground that 
publie welfare calls for the encourage- 
ment of religious institutions by the 
state. Not only in the promotion of 
public morality but in recognition of the 
eternal fitness of things, it may be urged 
that the state should refrain from exact- 
ing tribute from institutions dedicated 
in all good faith to the honor of Almighty 
God. On the other hand, it is sometimes 
urged that such exemption increases the 
burden of taxation upon nonexempt prop- 
erty and thus amounts to taxation for 
the support of churches. Meeting that 
objection on its own ground, the exemp- 
tion in question may be justified by the 
principle that the tax burden should be 
distributed in the proportion of each 
citizen’s ability to pay the tax, and it is 
obvious that the ownership of a church 
building by its congregation in nowise 
increases the ability of the members to 
pay taxes, but often the contrary. Thus, 
it follows that to tax churches would 
only augment, sometimes even multiply, 


the proportion of the tax to the paying 
29 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


power of tthe citizen. It would seem 
hardly better than cynical or malicious 
to penalize church members for their 
generosity in creating and supporting an 
institution of good which adds nothing to 
their private property or income. 

(3) The explicit recognition of God in 
the text of the laws is an occasional de- 
mand of devout citizens and its absence 
the pretext on which certain rigorous 
sects deliver their testimony against the 
participation of Christians in political 
affairs. Yet the question, Where and 
how shall God be recognized in the laws? 
is not easily answered. Shall this be 
done in the text of the written Constitu- 
tion? That document is only the formal 
definition and organization of the goy- 
ernment, and with equal reason the same 
requirement might be made with regard 
to each statute in turn as it is enacted. 
The result would be simply to multiply 
vain repetitions, as the heathen do. Or, 
shall it suffice if the divine recognition be 
enacted in the unwritten constitution, in 
the public mind and the historic purpose 


of the nation, the law which is behind 
30 


THE NATURE OF THE STATE 


every law? There, indeed, the name of 
God: is already written in letters of liv- 
ing light, and, as long as that writing 
remains, no formality of official printing 
can enhance its authority, nor perpetuate 
it one hour after the Name has faded 
from the heart of the nation. 


31 


CHAPTER III 
THE SOCIAL NATURE OF LAW 


LEGISLATION is the effective public will. 
It.is not always identical with statutory 
enactments. Statutes usually decree 
~ much less than the public will, and some- 
times even more. When the public will 
effectually decrees more than the statutes 
require we have, once more, ‘‘the com- 
mon law” which antedated all statutes 
and in its own ceaseless evolution is 
quietly but continually amending them. 
Indeed, as our Anglo-Saxon ancestors 
understood, nothing else was law. 

On the other hand, when the statute 
decrees more than the public will re 
quires, then one of two results ensues: 
either the statute becomes a “dead 
letter,” or else it attracts the publie will 
to its support. 

It is, then, not far from accurate to say 


that legislatures are the discoverers and 
32 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF LAW 


publishers rather than the makers of law. 
The real lawmaker, under God, is the ~ 
mind of society. 

At this point several practical ques: 
tions may be raised. 

For instance, shall statutes undertake 
to enforce all the dictates of private and 
domestic morality, as the Golden Rule, 
reverent speech, and the New Testament 
restrictions of divorce? Statutes often 
would not be effective in achieving these 
ends unless demanded by the general! will 
of society, and in that case many such 
principles would be willingly observed - 
without statutory enactment. 

Does it follow that no laws should be 
enacted until their enforcement is 
guaranteed by preexisting and well-de- 
fined public sentiment? The answer 
depends on whether the statute in ques- 
tion is likely in time to educate the peo- 
ple up to the moral level of the statute. 
For instance, the State of Kansas enacted 
prohibition at a time when the public will 
in its behalf was distinctly less than 
effective. But such public will as there 
was, by exercising itself, developed effec- 

33 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


tiveness. Thus a progressive statute with 
its zealous supporters became an educa- 
tional force whereby the public sentiment 
of that State has become relentlessly reso- 
lute and all but unanimous for the prohi- 
bition of the drink traffic. It may be 
hoped that the Eighteenth Amendment 
will have the same triumphant history. 
Again, slavery was abolished in the 
United States at a time when the public 
will was divided on that issue. Since 
then the public will has become unani- 
mous. Thus, for the process of social 
- legislation, history seems to validate this 
formula: first, the education of public 
Opinion; next, the enactment of a 
statute somewhat in advance of public 
opinion, yet harmonious with the social 
ideals; finally, the dramatic conflict for 
the enforcement of the statute, arousing 
public opinion to a conclusive decision. 
As a maker of the social mind the legis- 
lator thus has a twofold power; first, by 
branding certain odious acts as crimes, 
to render them more odious in the eyes of 
the community; second, by punishing 


them as crimes, or striving heartily so to 
34 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF LAW 


do, to rally favorable sentiment into a 
fighting passion for the law. Thus the 
penal code has always been one among 
the chief educational instruments in the 
moral and civic discipline of mankind. 
And this is no mere after-thought of 
“dry” propagandists casting about for a 
theory to support the great adventure of 
the Highteenth Amendment. It is a 
familiar position of accredited publicists 
in general and may be illustrated by the 
recent pronouncements of such eminent 
jurists as Freund! in America and Oppen- 
heimer? in Europe, neither of whom seems 
to be writing with any reference what- 
ever to our prohibition laws. It must, 
then, be recognized that the public will 
is not static but that it matures through 


a dynamic process of self-assertion and ~ 


self-exertion. 

The test in a given case need not be, 
Does the proposed statute embody a 
specific demand of the public will? but 


Does it embody an ideal which is sanc~ 


tioned by the public will? Perhaps when 





1See the Standards of American Legislation. 


2See The Rationale of Punishment. eee 





THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


Kansas enacted prohibition the public 
will of that State was not specifically 
demanding prohibition. But certainly it 
did sanction the ideals of sobriety, thrift, 
and social order, and from that sanction 
the ultimate effectiveness of prohibition 
was a natural outgrowth. When slavery 
was abolished the public will, perhaps, 
was not specifically demanding abolition, 
~ but it certainly sanctioned the ideal of 
liberty. 


36 


CHAPTER IV 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF 
DEMOCRACY 


DEMOCRACY is beginning to prevail in 
these days, but democracy did not begin 
in these days. 

It is as old as the Old Testament. 
Moses pledging the people to the Cove- 
nant of Jehovah was exemplifying the 
referendum. And as truly, if less spir- 
itually, the repudiation of Rehoboam by 
the voice of ten tribes against two 
exemplified the recall. 

The New Testament also, both in spirit 
and in letter, makes democracy no less 
than an attribute of the kingdom of God. 
“Jesus called them unto him, and said, 
Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles 
exercise dominion over them; Not so 
shall it be among you: but whosoever 
would become great among you shall be 
your servant; and whosoever would be 


first among you shall be your bondser- 
37 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


vant; even as the Son of man came not 
to be served, but to serve and to give his 
life a ransom for many.’ 

The same democracy was living in the 
Middle Ages when a serf’s son could be- 
come Pope, and when Thomas Aquinas, 
greatest of the authorized spokesmen of 
the Roman Church, could say: “A king 
who is unfaithful to his duty forfeits his 
claim to obedience. It is not rebellion to 
depose him, for he himself is a rebel 
whom the nation has a right to pull down. 
But it is better to abridge his power that 
he may be unable to abuse it. For this 
purpose the whole nation ought to have 
a share in governing itself. All political 
authority is derived from popular suf- 
frage, and all laws must be made by the 
people or their representatives.’ 

1. Democracy is not majority rule. 

It is not, of course, adverse to majority 
rule; neither are they identical, for 
majority rule is sometimes tyranny, and 
tyranny is never democracy. Two 


~—— 


1 Matt. 20. 25-28. 
2 Quoted by 8. P. Cadman, Christianity and the State, 
page 225. 
38 





THE SOCIAL NATURE OF DEMOCRACY 


bandits holding up one traveler would be 
majority rule, but hardly democracy. 
And it is no more democratic and hardly 
less a bandit’s deed when colored people 
are taxed to pay a bond issue for the erec- 
tion of public schools to which white chil- 
dren only are admitted. 

The “dictatorship of the proletariate” 
belongs to the same category of misrule 
as the dictatorship of autocrats, or of 
aristocrats, or of plutocrats, or of 
bandits, and Lenin was characteristically 
honest in declaring that he was no demo- 
crat. 

Majority rule is not always identical 
with democracy because the minority 
sometimes embodies the effective mind of 
the democracy. “In minorities opinion 
is uniformly more intense than it is in 
majorities, and this is what gives minori- 
ties so much greater influence in propor- — 
tion to their numbers.” 

Thus in some instances there is no sub- 
version of democracy when laws are en- 
acted and enforced through the activities 





’Park and Burgess, Introduction to The Science of 
Sociology, page 792. University of Chicago Press. 
39 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


of an alert minority while the majority 
remains relatively passive. “If 49 per 
cent of a community feel strongly on one 
side, and 51 per cent very lukewarmly on 
the other, the former opinion has the 
greater public force behind it and is cer- 
tain to prevail ultimately. This is espe- 
cially true of moral questions.”* Some- 
times it appears that such an inert 
majority, had it been aroused to self- 
expression, would have expressed itself 
in the negative. In such instances of 
resolute minorities overruling listless 
majorities we seem to have something not 
very different from “minority rule’; can 
it in any sense be called “democracy”? 
The answer is that inertness, like silence, 
gives consent; the inert majority, though 
a silent partner, is nevertheless an actual 
and a responsible partner in the trans- 
action in question. Indeed, is it not true 
that most of the responsibilities to which 
we hold ourselves and hold one another 
are regularly assumed, not by active affir- 
mation, but by inactive consent? In no 





‘Park and Burgess, Introduction to The Science of 
Sociology, page 829. University of Chicago Press. 
40 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF DEMOCRACY 


other way could individuals, or groups, 
or states get through the multiform and 
complicated business of their lives. 
Democracy does not require that all the — 
people must act all the time, but that all 
the people must be able to act at any 
time. In that case the action of as many 
as do act at a given time will be governed 
by the consideration that the entire pub- 
lic can act then and there if it will. The 
reality of democracy is to be tested, not 
by the incidents of its active control, but 
by the constancy of its potential control. 

It is only a superficial view that sees 
in such facts a compromise of democracy, 
a surrender of the substance for a shadow 
of power. It is only because of our obses- 
sion with numbers that we think we see 
a disproportionate influence of minori- 
ties. What we really see is the operation 
of a better principle of proportion, influ- 
ence proportioned not on the numerical 
but on the spiritual principle. We see 
gravity superseding enumeration, the 
weighing of brains rather than the count- 
ing of noses. Hence it is entirely con- 
sistent with democracy that a few of the 

41 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


people should interpret and apply to 
legislation the ideals that are cherished — 
by the people as a whole. There are 
always some minds superior to most 
minds in their understanding of the com- 
mon mind. And in nowise can the com- 
mon mind better vindicate its sovereignty 
than by ‘acceptance of competent. leader- 
ship. 

It should be noted again that such 
leadership is not always that of some 
outstanding individuals. More often it 
is the leadership of some group or organ- 
ization which has concerned itself in- 
tensely in some particular range of 
the public interests. When various 
minority groups, being competent and 
determined, are thus successful in the en- 
actment of legislation and in other func- 
tionings of government, often getting the 
will of the majority expressed and 
effected better than the majority could 
have done for itself, winning in the end 
the acquiescence and sometimes even the 
applause of the public, then we may say 
that such groups are acting virtually as 


the unofficial commissions of a democracy 
42 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF DEMOCRACY 


whose maturity is thus shown to be 
greater in the spirit than it ever can be 
in the letter. Here we seem to have an 
exact demonstration that democracy is 
functioning not as a mere mechanism but 
as a living organism. 

The error as to the relation of democ- 
racy and “majority rule’ comes, perhaps, 
from emphasizing “majority” in contrast 
with “minority.” Placing the emphasis 
on neither of these, we should find the 
ideal of democracy in the self-rule of all 
the people acting as one. This does not 
mean that all are to be of one opinion but 
that all are to be partners in the common 
interest. So far as such an ideal is 
actualized, each citizen is privileged to 
contribute his own influence to the public 
thought and purpose, and the degree of 
his actual control therein will always be 
measured by the worth and strength of 
his contribution. 

2. Democracy is never the exploitation 
of its members by the group. 

The Old-World theory, both Greek and 
Roman, was that the state is an end in 


itself, and that its aggrandizement and 
43 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


power are more important than the wel- 
fare of the citizens. Thus, too, “Deutsch- — 
land ueber alles” evidently implied that 
“das deutsche Reich” might rightly re- 
quire the unlimited sacrifice of “das 
deutsche Volk.” Such states defeat their 
own ends. They forfeit the greatness 
which they covet, and at last perish by 
feeding on their own vitals. Although 
this is the distinctive peril of imperial 
states, there seems to be no assurance 
that a democratic state might not incur 
the same fate through the same folly. 
Yet in so doing it would so far depart 
from the character of true democracy; it 
might still be a government of the people 
by the people, but not for the people. 

3. Democracy is self-government by all 
the people as an organic unit. 

The minority, being an organic part of 
the people, has rights which the majority 
does not override, for the rights in ques- 
tion are not those of the minority alone; 
they are the rights of everybody, the 
majority included. And if the majority 
violates the common rights, then the one- 


ness of the people has been violated and 
44 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF DEMOCRACY 


to that extent democracy has been re- 
placed by aristocracy. 

The public mind is a composite to which 
the majority and the minority each con- 
tributes in proportion to its influence. 
The public mind is therefore very ditfer- 
ent from what it would have been if the 
majority mind had given no considera- 
tion to the minority as a group or as indi- 
viduals. The rule of the majority might 
mean merely that one group imposes its 
will on another group. But the rule of 
the public mind should mean that every 


group Shares in creating the prevailing — 


will of the state. And not only the public 
mind as a whole, but also the mind of the 
majority itself is vitally modified by the 
mind of the minority. For instance, the 
mind of the Republican Party in the 
United States is to-day appreciably dif- 
ferent from what it would be were there 
no Democratic Party or if the latter were 
other than it is. 

In a true democracy the negative voters 
accept the final decision against which 
they have voted. And such an acceptance 


is more than a sullen sufferance of the 
45 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


inevitable; it is a definite and active co- 
operation in the newly created situation. - 
They may not, indeed, renounce their 
former conviction, but they do assert 
their higher conviction that it is neces- 
sary for the democracy to act effectively, 
and so they dedicate themselves to public 
team work. It is still their right to urge 
that the public policies in question be 
revised or even reversed, but meantime 
they are “strong for the team.” 

This team spirit makes the public 
policy the common policy of majority and 
minority alike, and is something nobler 
than mere “majority rule.” So far as we 
fail of this, as do those who try to repeal 
the Eighteenth Amendment by violating 
it, we fail of true democracy and achieve 
anarchy. So far as we succeed we differ- 
entiate our America from some of the so- 
called republics to the south of us, where 
majorities seek chiefly to rule minorities, 
or the strong to rule the weak, and where 
the negative voters, when they have hardi- 
hood enough, are almost sure to rebel 
against public decisions. Democracy 


consists in being “good sports.” The only 
46 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF DEMOCRACY 


better description is to say that it is 
brotherhood. Democracy, therefore, is 
nearly synonymous with society. It may 
be called the political aspect of socializa- 
tion. 


47 


CHAPTER V 
THE SOCIAL NATURE OF POLITICS 


SECTIONALISM was the earmark of the 
old politics. “North and South” is the 
familiar illustration in American history. 
And in Europe, no less than in America, 
the older political issues were not only 
racial, factional, and dynastic, but also 
provincial and even local. Much of his- 
tory is best read in such terms as Athens 
versus Sparta, Latium versus Etruria, 
Austria versus Hungary, English shires 
versus boroughs, Highlands versus Low- 
lands, New France versus New England, 
Chicago versus Saint Louis, or the Mis- 
sissippi Valley versus the Atlantic sea- 
board. 

Far more significant is the customary 
organization of government on the lines 
of geography and on the basis of terri- 
torial interests. In addition to the fact 


that nations are defined by their physio- 
48 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF POLITICS 


graphic boundaries, we have the cor- 
responding fact that their political 
structure is an elaborate system of terri- 
torial representation. Legislative bodies 
are composed of delegates from ‘‘dis- 
tricts’ or “wards,” senators represent 
“States” and even members of the Cabi- 
net and of the Supreme Court must be 
discreetly apportioned without disturb- 
ing the susceptibilities of our various 
“sections.” 

All this is so familiar that any alterna- 
tive system could hardly get itself con- 
sidered. Yet within the outward form 
and framework of this system another has 
already evolved with some definiteness of 
form, a high degree of working effective- 
ness, and no little suggestion of revolu- 
tionary possibilities. 

This new politics is that of social 
groups. The territorial unit is still, of 
course, the ostensible basis of represen- 
tation. But the actual struggle for repre- 
sentation is among interest groups. ‘‘The 
gentleman from Indiana” or “The mem- 
ber from Gray Wolf County” is not in- 


different to the interests of his State or 
49 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


county. but it is not unusual that he 
cares more for some “cause” which he ~ 
champions, or for some interested group 
upon whose influence he is dependent or 
whose welfare he has at heart. And thus 
the issues at stake and the interests in 
conflict in present-day politics are largely 
such as those of “organized labor against 
organized capital,” “the have-nots against 
the haves,’ “wets against drys,’ “the 
agricultural bloc,’ business interests 
seeking lower taxes opposed by teachers 
seeking higher pay and better schools, 
tenants against landlords, cooperatives 
against corporations, shippers against 
railroads, the debtor class against Wall 
Street, old school doctors against 
“healers” and osteopaths, Ku-Kluxers 
against Romanists and Jews, ex-service 
men, postal clerks, single-taxers, anti-vivi- 
sectionists, anti-vaccinationists, femin- 
ists, and eugenicists, to say nothing of 
pedestrians versus motorists. 

This tendency is most vividly visible in 
legislative bodies. There, his words and 
‘actions are likely to identify the repre- 


sentative, sometimes in some spectacular 
50 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF POLITICS 


manner, with the interest or cause for 
which he stands. But the same tendency 
is even more prevalent, probably because 
less conspicuous, in administration than 
it is in legislation. Thus the federal Geo- 
logical Survey, the Coast Survey, the 
Bureau of Plant Industry, the Depart- 
ments of Commerce, Agriculture, and 
Labor, the Consular Service, the Forest 
Patrol, the Bureau of Standards, the 
Federal Reserve Board, the Inter-State 
Commerce Commission, and the Chil- 
dren’s Bureau are a few of many such 
undertakings on the part of our national 
government, in addition to which our 
States, counties, and cities undertake an 
almost infinite variety of service admin- 
istrations. The fact that they serve cer- 
tain groups more directly than others 
does not usually detract from their essen- 
tial character of public service. For often 
the direct service of one group is an 
indirect yet greater service to society at 
large, as when the government promotes 
the economical marketing of crops or the 
prompt placement of unemployed labor. 


And it is often true that immediate 
51 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


injustice to some disadvantaged social 
group becomes an ultimate disaster to the ~ 
public. 

Most of the interests which thus get 
themselves inexactly represented are eco- 
nomic interests. But there is a proposed 
system which would aim to make actual 
representation measure exactly the inter- 
ests which are now inexactly measured 
through these manipulations of our terri- 
torial representation. For instance, one 
of the many political parties of France, 
the Liberal Action Party, has long cham- 
pioned the establishment, alongside the 
political parliament, of an economic 
parliament as a more or less authorita- 
tive but never silent partner in the prero- 
gatives of government. This party was 
able to rally more than a million voters 
to its support, and in January, 1925, the 
National Economic Council was legally 
authorized as an organ of the government 
of France. It consists of forty-seven 
members, nine of whom represent the 
public at large, eight represent capital, 
and thirty represent labor, including 


managerial, technical, and educational 
52 


-THE SOCIAL NATURE OF POLITICS 


labor, as well as manual labor. All are 
chosen by the political government. 
True, its functions are advisory only, but 
they are of a dignified and consequential 
character... Some are hoping, others fear- 
ing, that this body may some time evolve 
into a real parliament with no _ less 
than sovereign powers of legislation. 

An experiment even more significant 
than the French Economic Council is 
being launched as these pages are being 
written.” Late in the autumn of 1925 
Mussolini is undertaking the complete re- 
organization of the Italian Constitution 
on the basis of occupational representa- 
tion. The citizens of each province are to 
be organized into three electoral corpora- 
tions, representing respectively, agricul- 
ture, industry and commerce, and the 
intellectual professions. Each of these 
corporations is to consist of two parts, 
the employed and employing classes. The 
Senate of the Kingdom and the local 
municipal councils are then to be elected 





1The Labor Review, March, 1925, pp. 30-32. 
Current History Magazine, Deeember, 1925, pp. 
431-434. 
53 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


by these corporations. The new system 
will be applied to the Senate gradually as 
each seat becomes vacant in turn. An 
influential element of the Fascisti pro- 
pose that the new system be applied to 
the lower house of parliament also, and 
this would probably ensue should the new 
organization of the Senate hold its place 
in Italy’s constitutional structure. It 
seems probable that Mussolini will put 
this amazing revolution into actual effect 
and that, whether for good or ill, it will 
prove eventually one of the most sig- 
nificant political experiments of the pres- 
ent generation. 

A parallel tendency toward the politi- 
cal representation of social groups is also 
reported from far-away India. In the 
southern part of that empire the 
Nationalist party is committed to the 
representation of castes rather than of 
districts in the new provincial legisla- 
tures.2 This recalls the old Comitia 
Curiata of the Romans. Still more sig- 
nificantly, it recalls Booker T. Washing- 





ret ai article by E. A. Ross, The Century, December, 
54 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF POLITICS 


ton’s desire that the American Negroes 
may become “a nation within a nation,” 
and Horace Kallen’s proposal that the 
American republic shall add a federation 
of races to the federation of the States.* 

Wide apart as these ideas of economic 
representation and racial representation 
may seem, they are nevertheless parallel 
in the one respect that they foresee in 
social rather than geographical represen- 
tation the characterizing political fea- 
ture of the near future. 

It should be understood that the pres- 
ent writer’s intention is not to assert the 
superiority of the French or the Italian 
innovation over our own or any other 
representative system, nor to contend for 
the political representation of Hindu 
castes or of American Negroes grouped 
in electoral units. These are cited rather 
as illustrations of the wider tendency to- 
ward the socializing of politics, with the 
evolution of political forms becoming in- 
creasingly expressive of the social and 
cooperative spirit. 





4See American Journal of Sociology, September, 
1925, page 260. 
55 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


Such a system of group representation 
would not necessarily be based on occu- 
pational groups, nor need it wholly sup- 
plant the system of territorial represen- 
tation. But in some of its possible forms 
it would seem that the regular represen- 
tation of interest groups is likely to be 
approximated in the future institutions 
of constitutional government. Its essen- 
tial justice is evident in the fact that 
under the present system, if some one of 
the many group-interests is supported, 
say, by a million voters scattered through- 
out the States they might be unable to 
elect a single member of Congress. Yet 
another group, including only one tenth 
as many voters, if concentrated in one 
State, might control that State’s entire 
delegation to the Senate and House of 
Representatives. The wide-spread inter- 
est and the diffused constituency ought 
to be as well represented as those that 
are now favored by accidental aggrega- 
tion in a narrow locality. 

Hardly a week passes without some 
periodical writer making the horrified dis- 


covery that all this resembles the Soviet- 
56 


THE SOCIAL NATURE OF POLITICS 


ism of Russia, which is_ ostensibly 
(probably not actually) a system of gov- 
ernment by representation of occupa- 
tional groups. Thus the “Farm-bloc,” 
the American Federation of Labor, the 
Anti-Saloon League, and even the Ameri- 
can Legion are cordially consigned to the 
limbo of Lenin. If these are “soviets,” 
then as much is true of the “N. E. A.,” 
the bankers’ associations, the National 
Association of Manufacturers, the Ameri- 
ean Bar Association, and the United 
States Chamber of Commerce, all of 
which have definite and legitimate inter- 
ests to be promoted or protected by gov- 
ernment. The resemblance of such 
groups to the Russian soviets is, of 
course, superficial. Significant resem- 
blances in politics are not matters of 
form or mechanism but of spiritual atti- 
tudes. Considered as a state of mind the 
“Farm-bloc,’ for instance, resembles a 
Russian soviet in about the same degree 
that a Methodist Conference resembles a 
Mecca pilgrimage. Each of the former 
two is an economic group in political 
activity ; each of the latter two is a reli- 
57 . 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


gious group assembling at a destina- 
tion. 

Society does not subsist in geographical 
facts, Save in a minor sense. Society is 
the interaction of human minds, and our 
progressive politics will tend increas- 
ingly to register and effectuate the co- 
operative thought and conscience of man- 
kind. 


58 


CHAPTER VI 
THE SACREDNESS OF POLITICS 


“THY kingdom come, thy will be done, 
in earth, as it is in heaven.” The great 
words of the prayer, great as they are 
for worship, are as great for politics also. 
For the earthly state in which God’s will 
is done will be in very fact the heavenly 
kingdom for which we pray. If such a 
view of the state seems to be an ideal 
vision, yet is it not visionary. For, in 
the long run of history, political ideal- 
ism proves itself to be, as Benjamin Kidd 
denominates it, ‘‘the science of power.” 
And the highest significance which glori- 
fies such radiant names as those of 
Amenophis IV, Moses, Daniel, Louis LX, 
William the Silent, Gladstone, and Lin- 
coln is the sublime fact that they all 
relied on faith in God as a working force 
in practical politics. On the other hand, 


nothing in the historic record is plainer 
59 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


than this: that politics without God is 
impolitics. 

To say that the state is divine and its 
service religious, is not to ascribe perfec- 
tion to the structure of its government 
nor moral worth to the activities of its 
political life. Government may be imper- 
fect, even immoral, yet always is the state 
divine because it is a divine idea. Though 
polygamy is not divine, the family is 
divine. Though sweat-shops are not 
divine, human industry is divine. And 
taking the divine name in vain is hardly 
more profane than is the perversion and 
debasement of divine ideas. As Richard 
T. Ely says: “The nature of offenses 
against the purity of political life as 
offenses against God has not in recent 
years been adequately emphasized.’”* 

During the World War a word of tre- 
mendous effectiveness came into popular 
use, the word “slacker.” To be sure, it 
was recklessly and inaccurately bandied 
about, but on the whole it served well as 
one of the great moral missiles of those 
great days. The slacker was more hated 


1 The Social Law of Service, page 171. 
60 


THE SACREDNESS OF POLITICS 


than the enemy, and justly so. His was 
the sin of Meroz and the sin of Laodicea. 
And Dante, and Milton, and Jesus him- 
self have no harder words of indigna- 
tion against the doers of evil than the 
words in which they measure out their 
holy wrath against those whom the man 
on the street calls the “slackers.” We 
need that word in peace time no less than 
in war time. For our country needs in- 
telligent, courageous, and conscientious 
voters now as truly as it needed brave 
and loyal soldiers then. And not only 
in the grave duty of competent voting but 
in all the acts of citizenship and in all the 
social and moral attitudes that react on 
political welfare, the duties of every 
citizen are ever present and ever press- 
ing. Unfortunately, however, his civic 
duties are not merely antagonized by evil 
interests, but are also in hard competi- 
tion with interests that are not evil at all, 
but are simply preoccupying, and the 
latter are probably a more disconcerting 
obstacle to good citizenship than the 
former. Many good citizens are so busy 


abovt their private business that they 
61 


THE STATE AND THE KINGDOM 


have not time to “get busy” about the 
public business. The consequence is that - 
the public business is left to those who 
make it their private business. Some of 
these are conscientious and _ faithful, 
many are essentially selfish, some are 
sordid and even corrupt. We call them 
all “politicians” and think of them rather 
poorly. Yet “politician” truly means a 
servant of the public good, and every 
citizen ought to be a politician. An 
urgent public problem is “how to make 
the indifferent different.” 

It might be difficult to say certainly 
what is the greatest present need of our 
country. Perhaps it is merely this, that 
a goodly number of young men of good 
abilities and good education, and, if pos- 
sible, of independent means, should pre- 
pare themselves seriously and thoroughly 
to follow politics as a sacred vocation, 
determined to serve their country in 
peace as devotedly as good soldiers do in 
war. In setting such an example before 
the privileged young manhood of 
America, and doing it in a way that was 


at once successful, consistent, and illus- 
62 


THE SACREDNESS OF POLITICS 


trious, it is quite possible that Theodore 
Roosevelt rendered the most eminent of 
his many eminent services to his country. 
If a tithe of those who give themselves to 
successful moneymaking were thus to 
give themselves to the service of America, 
the future of the republic would be as- 
sured. 

To neglect one’s citizenship is well-nigh 
as disloyal as to evade the draft. To use 
it corruptly is something like treason- 
able traffic with the enemy. <A prayer is 
man’s wish to God. A ballot is man’s re- 
sponse to God’s will for man. A bad 
ballot is an impiety kindred to a bad 
prayer. Not to vote may be as irreli- 
gious as not to pray. But to exercise the 
full duty and merit the full privilege of 
American citizenship is a supreme 
achievement in patriotism and piety alike. 
Rarely has any saint in all the ages past 
had so great an opportunity to be a Chris- 
tian in living fact and lasting effect as 
that which the age of democracy affords 
to the common man. 

The state is on the upward way toward 


the Kingdom. 
63 








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